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How Sustainable Are Your Festival Wellies?
It’s coming up to summer, so you know that what that means. Festival season is fast approaching. Because of the pandemic it is looking less and less likely that we will be allowed abroad this summer. So if you are fellow Brit like me, I wont torture you by talking about the sunny festivals in more desirable places. Let’s focus on British festival culture. When attending any British festival it is essential to prepare yourself for the weather. Those sunny skies can quickly turn into heavy rainclouds. Which is why wellies are an essential at any British festival. Trust me. I have been outsmarted by British summertime before. Imagine ankle…
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Do You Need a Guide to Guilt-Free Festival Fashion?
The impact of festival fashion It is approximated that single-use clothing equates to $307 million per year. That’s 7.5 million outfits worn only once for occasions such as festivals and weddings. Often seen as a place for experimentation, festivals provide the opportunity for freedom and expression. Unsurprisingly, fashion plays a central role amongst the mud and mayhem. For many, deciding what to wear comes with much thought and deliberation. Festival fashion throughout the 20th century continues to influence the way people choose to dress for festivals today. It all began on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York in the late 60’s. Attracting hippies who felt alienated by the materialistic society they inhabited, Woodstock gave younger…
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Festival Fashion: Pre-festival Clothes Swap Anyone?
The line-up has been announced, the festival tickets are booked, and so, the hunt for the perfect festival outfit begins. In the absence of a clothes swap opportunity, most of us go straight on to Google in search of a new outfit. ‘Boho festival look’, ‘festival outfits’ and ‘Coachella outfit inspo’ being the go-to searches. We spend hours scrolling through images online on the hunt for the perfect look. The problem is, we never consider the fact that on our online pursuit of our ideal festival outfit, we are contributing to our carbon footprint. “BUT HOW?!” I hear you ask. “I’m only doing a bit of online research!” Every search…
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Woodstock to Once-Stocked: The Rise of Fast Festival Fashion
It’s August, 1969. The electrifying sounds of Rock ‘n’ roll – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Grateful Dead – wash over you as your head spins under your flower-crown and your feet dance on the muddy ground. Hypnotised, you gaze around at your friends, at the sea of people surrounding you: thousands of hearts beating as one, high on peace, sex and psychedelics. It’s the summer of love. The mystical Woodstock Festival of 1969 has earned its place in pop-culture history as the era-defining moment that catapulted festival culture into the mainstream. In the 50 years since Woodstock, the number of people making their annual pilgrimage to music festivals…
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Festival ‘wear it once’ mentality needs to change
The problem with festival fast fashion The problem with festival fashion starts with it being a buy, wear, throw away business model. Fast fashion is a highly profitable business model based on replicating trends and high-fashion design. This is not sustainable as these trends are being mass produced at low cost. Festivals are a main culprit of fast fashion because consumers buy cheap clothes to wear to them and throw them away afterwards. “This is wasteful, expensive and unsustainable, both in terms of the environmental costs of making new outfits and the tonnes of wasted clothes which then end up in landfill” Barnardo’s The independent reported, in a survey people…
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How To Style Sustainable Festival Fashion
After Covid-19 putting our lives on pause, it is understandable that we are eager to return to festivals and hear music live again. As we wait in anticipation to know if festivals will take place, you may have already started to plan your festival looks. But how sustainable are they? Festivals are notorious for fashioning the latest trends, but this often comes from fast fashion. Many materials used to make festival fashion outfits are not sustainable and contain lots of plastic. Most fast fashion garments are plastic based or contain mixed fibres. These cannot be recycled and will not naturally decompose in landfill. In 2019, Britons were expected to spend…
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Why Festivals Evolving Into Fashion Shows May Not Be a Good Thing
In the past decade, festivals have increasingly become more fashion orientated year on year. In fact, a huge part of watching festivals in the 21st century is to see what your favourite artists and influencers are wearing. It’s now seemingly part of festival goers’ itinerary to purchase new outfits for each day that ultimately end up trashed after one wear and a cool Instagram photo, which doesn’t need to be the case. Fashion Spotlight Coachella is a leading example, the most prestigious music festival there is, starting at $429 a ticket. Over the past few years, influencers such as James Charles, Nikkita Dragun and Bretman Rock have been spotlighted for…
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The Joys of a Guilt-Free Festival
Anticipation of finally being able to hear live music in a crowd of thousands is at an all-time high. After going through a worldwide pandemic, leaving us all locked inside for almost a year, anybody would daydream about it. There’s something magical about the buzz of picking out an outfit. The glee of arriving at a festival with friends. Bringing us together for the sole purpose of having a great time. Fashion at festivals has been a way of expression over the last 60 years, from a field of flares to all the way to fishnets. Festivals have been an opportunity to flaunt new extravagant summer outfits that lets us…
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Why Is The Disposable Nature of Festival Outfits Problematic?
Festival fashion is the perfect time for us to express ourselves without judgement for seeming too ‘out’ there. This is where fast fashion brands like PrettyLittleThing and Missguided come in handy due to their cheap nature and the fact that these clothes are easily disposable. Often the materials of these clothes are low quality, designed to last only a few wears. There are many issues with festival outfits, from the very production of the outfit to the final outcome of the outfit being put into wasteland. Production of the outfit: Often harsh chemicals are needed in order to make the outfit. This can include using oil in order to make…
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Sustainable Fashion: One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s T-Shirt
The ocean covers over 70% of our planet, produces 50%-80% of the oxygen we breathe and is home to 80% of life on Earth. Despite an increase in awareness of the plastic crisis and the damage that we are causing, eight million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the ocean each year. The fashion industry especially is a huge source of marine pollution, with half a million tonnes of microfibres being put into the ocean every year from clothing alone. The fashion industry is also the second largest consumer of water worldwide. To put this into perspective, it takes around 700 gallons of water to produce just one cotton shirt.…
